Nebraska congressman provides update on Ukraine after visit to war-torn country

Nebraska Republican Congressman Don Bacon visited Kyiv, Ukraine’s capitol, and Kharkiv, a city in eastern Ukraine, to meet with national security officials and frontline troops last week.

Bacon was joined by other members of the For Country Caucus, a bipartisan group of Congressional representatives with military backgrounds focused on national security issues.

Bacon said the group met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for an hour and also talked with the Ukrainian Minister of Defense, Director of Intelligence and Speaker of the Parliament.

The congressman said he heard several common talking points in Ukraine, including a frustration with President Joe Biden's rules of engagement for the country's war with Russia.

"The Russians are bombing Ukrainian cities with glide bombs using their air force, but Biden tells the Ukrainians he does not want them to attack those airfields," Bacon said. "In other words, there are Russian targets in Russia that are attacking Ukraine and Biden is saying 'Hands off, we don't want to escalate.'"

Bacon said Ukrainian leadership would like the U.S. to provide additional weapons and help train fighter pilots to provide better air defense. He said Ukrainians are also concerned with Russia evading sanctions and they would like the U.S. to call Russia a terrorist state.

Bacon said the cost of defending Ukraine could grow even higher in the future if Russia continues its advance because of additional spending in other eastern European NATO countries. He expects Putin will not stop with Ukraine, but will invade other former Soviet republics, including Moldova and Georgia.

"The expenses for NATO's Eastern defenses will go significantly up," he said. "The Baltic countries will feel very vulnerable. And in the end, this is the fight that we need to pay for now to win. It will cost is more in the future, but beyond that, it's just morally right."

Prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Bacon said he would have been reluctant to add Ukraine to NATO because it could prompt an attack from Russia, but now that war has broken out, Bacon has changed his view.

"I believe at this point, Ukraine's earned the right to start that process of becoming a part of NATO, and Russia has lost the right to complain about it with what they've done," he said.

While visiting the front lines of the war in eastern Ukraine, Bacon said thousands of drones the size of dining room tables were flying over the airspace, some for attacking troops and others for delivering supplies. He said both Russia and Ukraine were using modified Chinese drones with technology ahead of American capabilities in an electronic warfare environment.

"We've got to learn from what's going on here, so that we can help Ukraine better and maybe remove their dependency on China's drones, because China is trying to cut them off, and the Ukrainians are getting it through different markets, but China's pitched in with Russia here, and they're trying to stop their drones from getting to Ukraine," he said.

Bacon said he met with Americans working on closing the gap in drone technology while in Silicon Valley around two weeks ago.